


closer, now, to the edge

by sugarboat



Series: The Bee Movie, but every time they say the word 'bee' someone becomes a living hive [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Power Swap, Body Horror, Consent to body modification withdrawn and ignored, Light Sadism, Living Hive!Jon, M/M, but make it soft?, graphic depictions of getting corrupted, soon to be Living Hive!Martin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 08:21:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29871843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarboat/pseuds/sugarboat
Summary: Martin gets covered in bees.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: The Bee Movie, but every time they say the word 'bee' someone becomes a living hive [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1301540
Comments: 10
Kudos: 64





	closer, now, to the edge

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place directly following [the second fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18079058) in this series.

Jon takes one deep breath, then another. And, for good measure, one more after that. Martin has started squirming beside him on the couch – shirtless, on the couch, which had been a whole- a thing all on its own. A lot of stammering had been involved, even though really, what was there to say? And a lot of Martin crossing and uncrossing him arms over his chest until Jon had snapped something unkind but honestly, Martin, it isn’t as if he’s never seen another man’s upper body before, and Martin covering himself with his hands was wholly and entirely counterproductive at this point. 

…Martin has kept his hands very still, and very clasped in his lap, since then. Jon would – does – feel a little bad about that, but there are more pressing matters to attend to. Matters which have set Martin to shifting his weight around, his fists clenching over his thighs but resolutely staying put. Jon wants to reassure him. Jon wants to put his hands on Martin’s shoulders and force him to stay still, so he can think without distraction for one second. 

Except, there isn’t anything left to think about. Nothing left to be nervous about. Jon is going to do this. He _has_ to do this. They’ve talked the topic to death and back again and all that’s left is to walk the walk, so to speak. They’ve talked. They’ve agreed. They’ve planned, which is why they’re here at all. Martin shirtless on his couch, towels rolled out beneath him because god forbid they stain the fabric liner. Fidgeting and setting every nerve in Jon’s body on edge. 

His hive feels the same. Their song is beautiful, as always, but the notes are sharper. They’re anxious. _We’re anxious_. And excited. Anticipatory. They’ve clustered close to him. Jon can feel his heart stutter asynchronously to their melody. 

And this is the worse part of it. He has to do this. He’s going to do this. And he wants to. It’s taken him by surprise, is all. How much he _wants_.

There have always been certain urges, ever since- since he hasn’t been alone anymore. Certain people draw him, call to him, and he can tell they’re missing something. Something vital. The same something he was missing, once. The droning choir of his hive will crescendo until it’s so loud he thinks everyone must hear it, and once they hear it they’ll have to join in, like he joined. Exalt in how their bone and their flesh, how the mess of their meat and sinew can be turned to a harmonious meaning. Everything, doubt and fear and longing and rejection, how it can all melt away beneath the eternal tide of a song that never ends, that only grows, that only accepts, completely. 

Jon has always turned away from those people. As much as he longs to go to them he’s held himself back. The hive is – he knows, somewhere inside him, there’s something wrong with it. It’s unnatural. He can look in the mirror and see how it’s twisted him. Sometimes he can still remember the horror of those first few days with it, can remember how his hands shook at seeing the holes drilled through the skin of his cheek. Tweezers trembling as he dug in deep black pits and pulled white curls of larvae out of his chest. 

That was before he could hear their song. When they were only a monotonous buzz echoed back in the grinding of his teeth. The endless wet chewing of their mouths through his flesh. Making him a home. He hadn’t understood. But people weren’t supposed to understand. They could be happy, whole, _loved_ but – and this, Jon had to remind himself of – they weren’t supposed to be like this. 

The reasons weren’t always there for him to hold onto. And regardless of reasoning, he remembered fear and horror and disgust. It was worth it, of course, but wrong to inflict on another person. He thought. He thinks. 

This is the first time someone has asked him for them. Not out of any meaningful want. Nothing less than human desperation. A last resort. An odious burden, chosen only because every other avenue was simply less tolerable than this. Not a real choice, then, some part of him recognizes. 

The rest of him wants this too much to bear that argument out. He’s given Martin every opportunity to turn away. And here Martin is, instead. A beautiful expanse of skin. He’s going to make a lovely home. Everything about him is inviting. Jon has been tugged along towards him since the first day they met, when Martin stumbled his way awkwardly through greetings and stuck uncomfortably to his shadow no matter what Jon said to drive him away. Refusing to be deterred.

“Relax,” Jon finally says, and if anything, his words evoke the exact opposite response. Jon doesn’t resist the urge to roll his eyes. 

He sidles up closer, the both of them turned to face one another on their respective seats. He puts his hands on Martin’s shoulders, strangely aware that his palms are a little damp. He hopes Martin doesn’t notice. 

The swarm has started moving, their steps light and ticklish as they march down along his arms. They lift into the air from his chest, the short distance until they can land on Martin’s. Martin’s eyes are wide and fearful, gaze locked on his own. Jon wishes he could explain. That he could comfort him in any meaningful way. He’s never been good at this kind of thing. 

Jon has never understood people. People have never understood him. The swarm does. And more than that, it loves him, it’s bettered him, it’s changed him, form first and then function, gnawed away what was unloveable and left him filled instead with music. Jon wants Martin to know what’s waiting for him. After the, admittedly, unpleasant parts are over. 

He doesn’t know how. Instead, he leans in close again and brushes his lips across Martin’s. This is what Martin had wanted, offered up like the last request of a dying man. And maybe it is. Jon doesn’t entirely know how this will go, regardless of what he _hopes_ will happen. Their lips are dry, and Martin’s are soft. The skin of his shoulders is smooth, interrupted by little curls of soft hair. Martin gasps against his mouth, and Jon nearly jerks back at the glance of Martin’s tongue over his bottom lip. 

“Sorry,” Martin whispers, and then snorts a poorly concealed laugh. 

Jon does rear back then. “Sorry? Is there something amusing that I’ve missed?” 

For some reason, this makes Martin _giggle_. “No! God, no, really- really nothing, nothing at all is-”

“I must be misinterpreting the human condition of _laughter_ ,” Jon snipes, embarrassed. 

“It’s really- No it’s just, this whole situation? It’s-”

“Absurd.” 

“Entirely,” Martin agrees. “And I- I’m nervous.” 

And afraid. Martin doesn’t say it but suddenly Jon is overwhelmed by it. Martin’s pupils are wide, drawing color out of his iris and darkening his eyes. His hands are trembling still held, heaven help them both, in his lap. His breathing is short and erratic, and the aching, lonely song of him is so quiet and bereft that Jon wants to crawl inside him alongside his swarm, curl up cozy and warm in the cavity they’ll make of his chest and hum until the tune is writ into Martin’s marrow. 

Jon cups Martin’s face between two hands. Tilts it. They’re breathing in the same shared space, recycling the same shared air. A pithy imitation of what Jon knows true intimacy to be.

“You’ll be all right,” he says, suddenly sure. “I promise.” 

He presses their mouths together again, offering what sanctuary he can, what little he knows that Martin wants – actually wants – from him, and it’s there that he feels the first of his hive begin its work. 

Jon isn’t actually sure what it is, at first. The hive colonized him, but that was when they were disparate entities still, and Jon could only feel his side of the joining. The ugly death throes of his humanity. Pain, blinding pain, revulsion, horror, despair. 

There’s none of that this time. Everything sharpens. He can hear the notes of their song, the hum of restless wings and the clatter of carapaces. The soft, wet alto of his hive’s mouths, overfilling with ripe flesh where they bite. He can hear how his own body harmonizes, the pulse of his heart and the susurrations of his blood through his veins. The air rushing back and forth through his lungs, nestled in close to the hive catacombed around them. 

And he can hear how Martin’s song begins. Similar to his own, and how could it not? Jon wishes wildly for a moment that their hearts might synch, their breathing match pace. But Martin’s heart is a frantic gallop and his breath comes out in harsh whimpers, even as Jon breaks their kiss and shushes him, rubs their cheeks together in an animal expression of comfort. 

Martin is writhing. Clutching at Jon’s waist, then at his arms, fingers scrambling and slipping for purchase. Jon lets him. Jon wants to get closer, like his hive does, they all want to burrow deeper. 

When he pulls himself back from Martin – an awful eternity of space between them – his stomach lurches. The hive started its worked at Martin’s chest, similar to where it once started its work on Jon himself. The right side, where it must know the most vital bits of him aren’t located. They’re not ready to dig deep in fragile territory when they hardly know the lay of the land. 

There’s blood. Jon shouldn’t be surprised, there’s so much blood. That’s what the towels were for. But it seems so, he doesn’t know- incongruous with how he’s feeling. The light giddiness that makes it hard for him to be still. It’s hard for Martin to stay still, too. There are a handful of dark holes on Martin’s chest, the swarm already burrowed beyond sight, and more that have only begun to be excavated. It hurts. It’s terrible. It’s awful to be so wide open. 

“You’ll be fine,” Jon says. Martin’s eyes are shiny with tears when he opens them again, and Jon pets through his hair gently. “They won’t leave you empty for long.” 

“Stop,” Martin gasps, “Please, Jon-”

“It’s a little late for second thoughts, Martin,” Jon says wryly. It’s a comment that would have gotten him a chuckle, a shared look- something, earlier. Now, Martin just shudders and moans. Jon frowns. “I- I can’t stop now.” 

Martin just doesn’t understand. This is the bad part, Jon reminds himself. It’s a thought that’s hard to hold onto, because the part of him that’s the hive has never felt more alive, more purposeful. This is bad. This is _right_. Jon never wants this feeling to end. This is what they’re supposed to do. Martin hurts now, yes, but now never lasts forever, does it? Temporary, Jon thinks. Temporary. 

He’s swung his leg over across Martin’s to straddle his lap. Jon wants- he wants so much. More. He wants more, he wants closer, fuller, deeper. There’s something that satisfies him down to his bone, knowing how Martin is squirming beneath him, filled with his swarm. His skin soon to be fat with his hive’s spawn. All those dark little holes, even now growing in number, hosting life and community and singing their endless, joyous song.

Jon shudders himself and presses himself closer. Thinking of the tunnels his hive will carve beneath Martin’s skin, deep in his muscle, so far down nothing will ever be able to remove them. Digging their way around his bones, breeding themselves there, until Jon’s swarm isn’t even his swarm anymore, it’s _their_ swarm, their song-

“Martin,” Jon gasps. He’s rolling his hips, cock hard and throbbing and Martin, poor Martin, is holding onto him and sobbing with each shaking breath. 

The members of the hive that haven’t yet been employed are swarming around them, a vibrant swirling frenzy ebbing and flowing around their bodies. Some of them, too excited or too hungry, have landed on Jon himself, somewhere near his hips, are digging their teeth into flesh they already own. It makes him groan, dropping his forehead against Martin’s shoulder, thinking how the apiary of his own body is being expanded upon. 

He can’t see Martin’s face anymore but he isn’t sure he wants to, anyway. And from this vantage he has a closer look at the way his hive chews into Martin’s skin. Bits of skin pinched up between tiny mandibles, bitten over and over until skin goes red and redder and then pops, sheared away under the pressure of their sharp, tugging mouths. He can watch their plump little bodies wriggle their way deeper beneath Martin’s skin. Jon sighs, feeling almost delirious, mouthing at Martin’s skin himself. He wishes he could join them. 

What Martin must feel like on the inside. Warm and plush, flush with life all around him. Such a tight fit for his swarm to writhe into. Martin has his arms around him, fingers hooked like claws scratching at his backside. It’s all right. Jon wants to let him know that. Everything is so, so good. 

Jon nuzzles his way inside, along the slope of Martin’s shoulder just above where his hive is working, until he’s found the crook of Martin’s neck and follows it upwards. There are tears on Martin’s cheeks. Jon kisses them away, chases their trails with his lips. 

“Martin,” Jon says again. He’s slurring, he feels drunk, delightfully loose. “Martin, it’s all right.” 

“Jon.”

Martin doesn’t sound comforted. That is, unfortunately, beginning to matter less and less. Jon plasters himself to him, chest to chest, wanting closer. Members of his hive fly off them to avoid being squashed. Some of them sting him. Some of them sting Martin, which fascinates him. Like it’s new, the way the sharp points of their stingers gouge into his soft skin, the pained little whimpers and yelps Martin gives in response. Jon waves the hive away. 

“Don’t,” he scolds, but it’s hard to tell who to even reprimand. He settles for stroking his fingers over the red spots they left behind. He hopes he’s there when they pinken and swell the flesh around them. He hopes Martin lets him touch them. 

“Something of an o-occupational hazard, huh?” Martin jokes weakly. His blunt nails are still digging furrows along Jon’s spine. 

“Something like that,” Jon replies. 

His arms are wound around Martin’s shoulders. Martin is warm beneath, around him, against him, unnaturally so. Sweat is starting the curl the hairs at the nape of his neck and at his temple, fine baby hairs plastering to his forehead. Even so, his skin keeps breaking out into goosebumps and he shivers like he’s caught the chill of death in waves. 

“I’m going to be all right?” Martin whispers. His voice is faint. 

Jon nuzzles his cheek against the side of his neck again. “You’ll be fine, Martin.” 

…It goes on like this for some time.

Jon does, eventually, awaken. He’s not even sure when he drifted to sleep, exhausted, but his muscles ache like he’s run a marathon. Or, probably more accurate to his physical ability, attempted to run a marathon, given up not even halfway through, and been forced to hobble his way to the finish line regardless. His head is pounding, spiking pain in an epicenter around his right temple, and his mouth feels stuffed full of cotton. 

There’s a deep throbbing coming from his stomach, curling all down the front of his hip, low into his groin. It takes him a long moment to remember the hive and its expansion. His emotions feel far away from him right now, but- this is the first time his hive has grown in quite some time. They’d reached a sort of equilibrium, a happy coexistence. He wonders what this means now. 

And his joints ache like they’re filled with sand. But that, at least, is easily explained by the position he’d fallen asleep in. Somehow, he ended up curled around Martin, fully in his lap, clinging around his neck-

Martin. Martin! Jon jolts up, peeling himself from the fever-hot body he’d happily plastered himself against. Martin is… sleeping. He thinks. Jon stares at him, near motionless in the dim of his living room – and when had it gotten dark? Thank Christ one of them had left the hallway light on – sure that slow rise and fall of Martin’s chest is a trick of the lighting. He leans in closer, until he can feel the light stirring of Martin’s breath against his skin. 

Jon sighs, dropping back in relief. At least he didn’t- Martin is fine. Alive. He closes his eyes and lets his head loll down against Martin’s shoulder again. 

There, in the quiet, he can hear it. The song of his hive is low, pleased and satiated, suffusing him with a deep and abiding satisfaction. And just underneath it is another. The missing harmony that Jon hadn’t even realized he _was_ missing, complementing the choir of his own hive. He can barely hear it, it’s so new and fragile. But it’s there. It worked. 

Jon pushes himself closer and sighs. He lets the melody of their hives lull him back to sleep.


End file.
